At the 2026 Northern Zone Conference of YMCA Nigeria, held from November 10 to 14 at the YMCA National Leadership Training Centre (NLTC), Lamingo, Jos, Plateau State, under the theme, “Different Contexts, Common Aspirations: Young Voices, Shared Vision, Sustainable Future,” one truth stands out: young people are no longer merely beneficiaries of development. Across Serbia, Kenya, Nigeria and the wider world, they are organisers, innovators, voters, climate advocates, artists and community builders. Their voices must therefore move beyond consultation to genuine decision-making.
I have the honour and privilege of representing Mr Hassan Gambo Bissu, Executive Director of YouLead360 Development Initiative Nigeria, whose message is clear: young voices can produce real impact when young people are organised, informed, connected and trusted with meaningful opportunities for participation and leadership.
YouLead360’s work in North-East Nigeria demonstrates that youth participation is strongest when it is practical, particularly when young people help restore livelihoods, strengthen community resilience and turn local challenges into opportunities.
A generation already leading
The world’s youth population is not waiting for permission to shape the future. In Serbia, a student-led movement that began after the November 2024 collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people, grew into one of the country’s largest civic mobilisations in decades.
By early 2025, protests had spread to more than 400 towns and cities, while a rally in Belgrade in June 2025 attracted an estimated 140,000 participants. The movement’s strength lay not only in its numbers but also in its discipline. Students combined public protests, civic education, long-distance marches and demands for institutional transparency.
Serbia offers an important lesson for African youth movements: young people can transform grief and frustration into organised civic action without resorting to violence. Their demands centred fundamentally on democratic accountability, safety, transparency and competent public institutions. These are not foreign ideals; they are universal aspirations shared by young Nigerians, Kenyans, Serbians and citizens across the world.
Kenya: Participation beyond protest
Kenya’s 2022 general election provides a sobering counterpoint. Although young people aged 18–35 constituted 39.84 per cent of registered voters, representing about 8.8 million people, youth voter registration declined by 5.17 per cent compared with 2017.
This reveals a central paradox: young people may be highly visible in digital activism and street mobilisation but remain under-represented in formal political participation.
The lesson is not that youth apathy is inevitable. Rather, institutions must earn young people’s trust through credible electoral processes, economic opportunities, safety and responsive governance. Kenya’s experience reminds us that young voices need more than microphones; they need systems that listen, respond and protect civic space.
Meaningful youth participation requires access to political party structures, public budgets, peacebuilding processes, policy design and elected offices, rather than symbolic inclusion.
Nigeria: #EndSARS and the power of organised youth
Nigeria’s #EndSARS movement of October 2020 remains one of the most powerful illustrations of youth-led civic agency in Africa. Amnesty International documented protests across 21 states, with young Nigerians peacefully demanding an end to police brutality, extortion and extrajudicial killings.
During October 2020, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project recorded more than 180 demonstration events linked to the movement.
#EndSARS was not simply a protest against a police unit. It was a demand for dignity, accountability and a state that protects rather than preys on its citizens. It also revealed the creativity of Nigerian youth through crowdfunding for legal aid and medical support, digital documentation, decentralised organising, art, music, poetry and social media advocacy.
Yet the movement also exposed a hard reality: civic energy without durable institutions can be vulnerable to repression, misinformation and fatigue.
The task before this generation is to transform moments of mobilisation into sustainable structures, including youth-led organisations, cooperatives, policy networks, community foundations and accountable leadership pipelines.
YouLead360: Young voices in rural resilience
In North-East Nigeria, YouLead360 Development Initiative’s engagement under Mercy Corps’ Rural Resilience Activity (RRA) demonstrates what youth participation looks like when it moves from slogans to service.
The RRA, implemented by Mercy Corps in partnership with the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) and Save the Children, operates in Adamawa, Borno, Gombe and Yobe states to help more than 600,000 people, including young people, women, farmers, internally displaced persons and small businesses, overcome chronic vulnerability and poverty.
The programme adopts market systems approaches to strengthen livelihoods, financial access, social capital and private-sector engagement.
Its youth-focused interventions include training in agronomic practices, life skills, financial literacy and vocational skills, helping young people establish businesses or access decent employment.
This is youth participation at its most meaningful: young people are not merely receiving aid; they are rebuilding markets, improving food systems, supporting recovery and strengthening resilience in communities affected by conflict and climate stress.
During the 2021 International Youth Day commemoration, the Activity engaged young people across the North-East in climate action. More than 7,000 economic and environmental conservation trees were planted in erosion-prone areas and public spaces. In Gombe State, more than 1,200 young people participated in advocacy and tree-planting activities.
In Adamawa State, 60 young people were trained to convert plastic waste into interlocking bricks and sawdust into cooking fuel and manure.
These are not small gestures. They demonstrate that youth-led climate action can simultaneously address unemployment, environmental degradation, energy poverty and community renewal.
Climate, technology and the creative economy
Climate change is the defining intergenerational justice issue of our time. Young people in the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin, Kenya’s arid counties and the Balkans face droughts, floods, displacement, food insecurity and shrinking livelihood opportunities.
Yet they are also closest to practical solutions, including climate-smart agriculture, waste-to-wealth enterprises, renewable energy innovation, digital extension services, early-warning communication and community-based conservation.
Technology has expanded the reach of young voices. Mobile phones, social media platforms, open data, artificial intelligence and digital finance can help young people organise, monitor public services, access markets and document human rights concerns.
However, technology is not automatically democratic. It can also spread disinformation, deepen inequality and expose activists to surveillance. The ethical responsibility is to build digital literacy, protect civic space and ensure that innovation serves communities rather than replaces human accountability.
Science and the arts are equally vital. Young scientists can translate climate data into local solutions, while young artists can make policy debates more human, memorable and inclusive.
A mural on peacebuilding, a spoken-word performance on displacement, a radio drama on girl-child education or a community exhibition on climate resilience can reach audiences that technical reports cannot.
The future will be shaped not only by engineers and economists but also by storytellers, organisers, farmers, coders, teachers and peacebuilders.
From aspiration to architecture
The conference theme is timely because differences in context should never become an excuse for division. A young person in Jos, Maiduguri, Nairobi or Belgrade may face different challenges, but shares common aspirations: safety, dignity, opportunity, credible institutions, climate security and a voice in decisions that affect their life.
To ensure that young voices produce real impact, governments, civil society organisations, faith-based institutions and development partners should:
- Create youth advisory structures with genuine authority over budgets, programmes and policies.
- Invest in youth-led organisations rather than treating young people merely as programme participants.
- Expand access to skills, finance, digital tools, land, markets and mentorship.
- Protect civic space, peaceful assembly, journalism and non-violent activism.
- Integrate climate resilience, peacebuilding and economic opportunities into youth programmes.
- Measure success not by workshop attendance but by jobs created, businesses sustained, policies changed and communities made safer.
The United Nations has recognised that youth participation improved significantly between 2021 and 2024 across UN entities and country teams, reflecting stronger efforts to involve young people in planning, advocacy and programming.
That progress must now be matched at national and community levels.
A shared vision
Young voices are not a threat to established leadership; they represent its renewal. From Serbian students demanding transparency to Kenyan youth seeking electoral relevance and Nigerian young people transforming trauma into civic action and rural resilience, the message is consistent: when young people are trusted, adequately resourced and included, they build futures rather than merely inherit problems.
As YMCA Nigeria’s Northern Zone gathers in Jos, the challenge is to move beyond inspiration. Let this conference become a platform where young people help design the solutions they will live with. Let youth participation become institutional, inclusive and measurable.
And let every young voice, whether in a rural cooperative in Yobe, a classroom in Jos, a start-up in Nairobi or a protest square in Belgrade, be recognised as essential to building a just, peaceful and sustainable future.
Cliff Stanley
Political Scientist and Public Theologian
Jos, Plateau State
ECWA Theological Seminary, Jos (JETS)
Email: cliffstanley3@gmail.com
Phone: 07032826319